Category Archives: Propaganda

Economic Animism

Barack Obama, Conservatism, Economy, Neoconservatism, Political Economy, Propaganda, Republicans

Republikeynesians, especially, have been demanding that in his first address to a joint session of Congress, Obama “talk up” the economy. “What Obama Should Do,” blared the typical headline in the neoconservative National Review. And the answers: “Be positive, if prudent,” instructed Bill O’Reilly. “Restore economic confidence,” advised Conrad Black, a conservative who also believes that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the champion of freedom. (Black, who, incongruously, combines a call for serious central planning with a condemnation of it, has, seemingly, learned nothing from falling prey to the same predators.)

This tired battle cry just goes to show the depths of this lot’s economic “thinking.”

Most Republicans have taken up economist John Maynard Keynes’ kooky concept of “animal spirits.” This was Keynes’ condescending reference to consumer confidence. Keynes believed that the fickle consumer’s biorhythms controlled the economy (I kid you not). Which explains why confused Republicans, like Democrats, keep kibitzing about “a crisis in consumer confidence.”

The implication being that “confidence” will galvanize the jobless and the penniless to spend.

I sincerely hope not.

By the way, the Voodoo Child has obliged. This is the first line in Obama’s pie-in-the-sky speech:

“[T]onight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”

American Newspapers Dying Of Self-Inflicted Wounds. Good.

IMMIGRATION, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Multiculturalism, Outsourcing, Propaganda

I join Peter Gadiel in celebrating some creative destruction–the demise of the newspaper industry.

Writes Gadiel on VDARE.Com:

“American newspapers are dying. Let us celebrate, since in their extinction lies the only hope for journalism.” …

“Newspapers were largely owned, edited and to a considerable degree staffed by people who actually were from the town about which they wrote. Thus, when you got the Sheboygan (Wis.) Press, The Indianapolis Star or the Florence (Ala.) Times-Daily it was a pretty sure thing that when you read an editorial, the news pages, the women’s page—whatever—you were reading something written or at least edited by someone who had roots in that city.”

“Not so today. The people writing the editorial in the Hendersonville (N.C.) Times News or “reporting” about events in the Asbury Park Press are corporate gypsies who come from someplace else via some school of journalism located somewhere else. They are all waiting to move to a bigger paper in a bigger city on the way up to starting the trip all over again back down in the small towns as assistant editor.”

“What’s worse, the gypsies who staff those papers are hired by people who are answerable to the likes of ‘Pinch’ Sulzberger of the NY Times…”

More.

Hamas Uses Human Shields (Dah!)

Iraq, Islam, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Jihad, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Propaganda, Terrorism, The West

The liberal mindset infesting the West cannot comprehend what the hopelessly left-liberal Israel is up against.

A picture paints a thousand words:

Here Gazans, acting as an Ummah, casually describe the practice of galvanizing warm bodies behind which their warriors can cower. And Terror TV reports the protocol straight faced, with embellishments. What liberals—the far left as well as the far-gone libertarian and paleo factions—don’t get, is what Hamas’s Ismail Haniya explained quite clearly.

Having figured out Israel’s Achilles Heel some time ago, Haniya once snorted to the Washington Post: “Palestinians have Israelis on the run, because they have found their weak spot: Jews love life more than other people, and they prefer not to die.”

Updated: Palestinian Propaganda

Africa, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Jihad, Palestinian Authority, Propaganda, War

Jihad Watch has the goods:

Human Shields Update: “OC Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin told the cabinet that Hamas was using mosques, public institutions and private homes as ammunition stores.”

And:

Perhaps all this is painfully obvious, but the mainstream media has become a full-bore organ of “Palestinian” propaganda. This CNN article is just one egregious example out of many. It goes on for paragraph after paragraph about the civilians wounded in Gaza, with only one skeptical sentence giving the other side of the matter: “Israeli leaders say they are trying to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza.” They “say” they’re “trying” — but as the rest of the article shows, obviously they’re not succeeding.

What could CNN do if it had any interest in actually being an organ of respectable journalism? CNN reporters could have asked about the Palestinians’ admitted use of civilians as human shields. They could have gone to Meshaal and Haniyah and asked why Hamas is launching attacks from civilian areas.

Read on.

Here’s an antidote to the mainstream media propaganda on Israel and Gaza:

If you or someone you love is falling prey to mainstream media propaganda about the jihad against Israel and the rest of the world, get the facts in this flash video from the Horowitz Center.

Update (Jan 5): You’re wrong about the enemies of the Palestinian people, Myron. You err in making the same split that commentators carrying on about Mugabe commit: the bifurcation between the good people of Africa and Arabia and their wicked leaders.

In the latter case, the Arab Street has always been more radical than the leadership. Witness the muted reaction from Muslim heads of state to the Israeli incursion, compared to that of the seething Street.

As to the people of Africa versus their leaders: Do you know of any opposition leaders du jour, favored by the wise West, who’ve departed in conduct from the Strong Man they’ve usurped? Almost every African, the little guy too, considers “public office as an exercise in scavenging.”

Take a look at Africa’s affairs. Its people need no special encouragement from their leaders to shed blood.